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Nearly perfect weekend lifts Vettel at Suzuka

October 6, 2012

Sebastian Vettel won the pole and led Sunday's race from start to finish on a nearly perfect weekend for the Red Bull Racing driver. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Sebastian Vettel's third win of the season in the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka has narrowed the gap between the defending Formula One series champion and current points leader Fenando Alonso to just four points with five races remaning this year.

Vettel admitted he was surprised to have a perfect weekend that saw him take pole, lead all the way and set fastest lap.

“Since yesterday in qualifying, nothing I think could be better,” Vettel said. “You come across these kinds of races or weekends very, very rarely. Unbelievable. We had a very good start, obviously it was important as Mark was running into trouble at turn one and two, I didn't see what happened behind him. I saw I had a better start than him and Kamui [Kobayashi] was probably already past Mark [Webber] before the first corner, I was focusing on my car and to get through the first couple of corners.

“Obviously, very quickly I saw the safety car boards. Wasn't sure what happened. When we came around the first time, surprisingly there was nothing there, so I think the marshals probably did a very good job cleaning up the track. I don't know how many cars were involved but obviously, yeah, it was crucial to not be in that kind of pack. And after that I had a very, very good race car.”

Vettel said he didn't know why his car was so good around Suzuka.

“We didn't have major upgrades for this race," Vettel said. "I think it was just the fact of the car suiting to the track, finding the right setup on Friday and then toward Saturday it was just coming together. The balance was there and it was just working. I think we had a fantastic race and I said to the guys, when you have a dream about how your race car should be, that's exactly what you're wishing for, so I'm very, very happy and very proud of the team. They stayed very calm all the race.

“The pit stops obviously we had a big gap so we had a bit of luxury to the guys behind to drop some time--but they seemed very focused. Also, inside the car I tried not to drop too much time, because obviously with the sun coming down, the sun was quite low in the end and there's a couple of tricky corners, especially turn eight, entrance of 13 where we've seen cars spinning over the weekend.

“And it's very easy to get carried away and think about the corner after the present corner; you start to think ahead and lose the focus and do a little mistake. I tried to stay in the moment and until the end it was fantastic because I had a car where I could control the race and I could push as hard as I wanted to and take care of the tires, so all in all it was fantastic.”